In his vow to fight on after UFC 217, Michael Bisping sings a familiar tune

You didn’t think you were going to get rid of Michael Bisping that easily, did you?

Well think again, because as the former UFC middleweight champion explained after losing his title to Georges St-Pierre in Saturday’s pay-per-view main event at UFC 217 in New York, he’s not ready to retire yet.

“I don’t want my last time in the octagon to be me getting choked out,” Bisping said following the event. “So I’ll be back in there at some point.”

We’ve heard this one before. Several times, in fact, and from some pretty great fighters. It’s a vicious cycle, is what it is.

Typically how it works is, you’re getting older and you’re coming off a loss, which is the only reason why anyone’s asking you about retirement in the first place. But you don’t want to retire on a loss. What kind of a note is that to end on?

So now you’ve got to get a win before you can feel good about calling it quits. And if you need a couple tries to get that win, so be it.

But then, what if you get that win? Isn’t that a sign that you’ve still got it after all? Turns out that retirement talk was premature. You can still win fights and cash checks, so why wouldn’t you? At least until you lose again, and then the cycle starts all over.

What makes it even trickier for Bisping (30-8 MMA, 20-8 UFC) is that middleweight has become a very dangerous place, especially for a former champ with a lot of enemies about. Think about the opponents who would make the most sense for him now. Think about which fights the UFC is likely to think it could sell.

There’s his old foe Luke Rockhold, for example. They’re due for a rubber match after splitting a pair of fights that ended with them somehow liking each other even less than when they started. The acrimony alone would garner attention, and it’s not like Rockhold has anything better to do as he waits for the title picture to clear up.

Then there’s Yoel Romero, whose beef with Bisping involved the ripping of flags and the burning of effigies, resulting in a simmering and as-of-yet-unresolved feud.

Both of those are dangerous fights for Bisping, especially now. He hopes to fight in London in March, but he also turns 39 in February. He’s won so many fights with his resiliency and his stubborn refusal to quit, and now he wears the damage from those wars all over his face.

As St-Pierre explained in his post-fight remarks, the left hook he landed to set up the finish came from diligent film study. He and his team had noticed that Bisping, who’s struggled with injuries to his right eye for several years, had difficulty with strikes that came from that side.

Now that St-Pierre was nice enough to explain it on live TV, look for that to be something that all of Bisping’s future opponents try to use to their advantage.

Of course, maybe the UFC won’t ask too much of the company man in his return to action. He doesn’t necessarily have to fight a top middleweight if all he wants is to end on a high note. Then again, you have to reach pretty far down the middleweight ranks right now to find anyone who’s not a highly effective purveyor of violence.

Any way the story ends, Bisping will go down as one of the most successful UFC fighters of all time, as well as one of the great overachievers in MMA history. He was consistently overlooked and undervalued by fans and fellow fighters alike, but somehow he ended up with a title and the all-time record for UFC wins.

Getting one more (or not) probably won’t make any great difference to his legacy or his bank account, since both ought to be pretty secure by now. But the obstinate search for that elusive final win has a way of backfiring on aging fighters. And maybe any ending that lets you walk away with your health intact ought to be considered a happy one.

For complete coverage of UFC 217, check out the UFC Events section of the site.